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ARTHIST

ARTHIST 264A:Picturing the Cosmos

This seminar explores the place of images in how we understand and imagine the universe. The course draws on art, science, and popular culture, and pays particular attention to the ways they inform each other. Examples include: star maps, science fiction films, appropriated astronomical images, and telescopic views of stars, planets, and nebulae. Using these representations as well as accompanying readings we will discuss the importance of aesthetics for conceptions of the cosmos; the influence of technology on representations; strategies for representing concepts that exceed the limits of human vision; and the ways that views of the universe reflect and shape their cultural context. Open to undergraduates and graduates.

Course on the history of twentieth and twenty-first century American images of space and how they shape conceptions of the universe. Covers representations made by scientists and artists, as well as scientific fiction films, TV, and other forms of popular visual culture. Topics will include the importance of aesthetics to understandings of the cosmos; the influence of media and technology on representations; the social, political, and historical context of the images; and the ways representations of space influence notions of American national identity and of cosmic citizenship.

Two spring quarter exhibitions -- oil paintings and drawings by Zeng Fanzhi at the Anderson Collection, and Ink Worlds with works by two dozen major ink painters, calligraphers and video essayists at the Cantor -- convey part of the diversity of contemporary Chinese art practice. This seminar will explore media and techniques, artistic careers and strategies, and questions of cultural identity, history, place, language and the visionary presented by these artists and exhibitions.

Last offered: Spring 2018

ARTHIST 273:Visual Culture of the Arctic (FILMSTUD 273)

In what ways does contemporary art address the slowly unfolding catastrophes of melting ice and thawing permafrost in the Arctic due to climate change? How might contemporary art and experimental cinema help us come to grips with the emotional disturbance of living amidst the deep-seated changes that are happening in our environment? These are the key questions this course attempts to answer.nThe first part of the class attempts to outline the complex history of Arctic visual and cultural representations through an interdisciplinary lens. The second part focuses on the more recent artistic and cinematic responses to climate change in the arctic. For their final projects, students will be able to combine analytical writing with creative projects that could take the form of photography, installation art, web-based art, fiction, video or poetry.

Last offered: Spring 2016

ARTHIST 278:Introduction to Curating

Gain hands-on curatorial experience at the Cantor Arts Center by developing an exhibition in the Oceanic gallery about the Global Southn(the Indian Ocean region). Explore and debate strategies for presenting diverse art forms, conduct research, prepare wall texts and labels, and participate in designing the exhibition space in collaboration with fellow students, faculty, and Cantor staff members.

Last offered: Autumn 2016
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-ED

ARTHIST 280B:The World of Chen Hongshou (1598-1652) (ARTHIST 480B)

Planned to coincide with a special international exhibition at the Berkeley Art Museum of works by the seventeenth century figure painter and print designer Chen Hongshou (1598-1652), this seminar will explore his art and cultural environment. Along with close study of his original paintings, we will study his connections with printmaking and publishing, fiction and drama culture, and his literary, social and patronage networks.

New film cultures and movements in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and mainland China in the 80s. Key directors including Jia Zhangke, Wu Wenguang, Tsai Ming-liang, Hou Hsiao-hsien, Wong Kar-wai, Ann Hui. Topics include national cinema in the age of globalization, the evolving parameters of art cinema, and authorship.

This course explores how Chinese Buddhist art adapts to changes in the religious visions, imagination, and practices of Buddhism in China. It focuses primarily on Buddhist paintings but will occasionally include other types of artistic devices, such as space for display, architectural design, and sculpture, to reach a better understanding of the viewing and the religious experiences. Striving beyond the discussion of style and iconography, we will broaden our pursuits by incorporating various issues such as the domestication of a foreign religion, the relationship between Buddhist literature and images, fusion with popular literature, social connections among eminent monks, scholars and artists, and political use of Buddhist images.

An examination of the ethics, poetics and politics of visual representation in a selection of photographers and artists from Catalonia: images of the Spanish Civil War by Agustí Centelles, snapshots of urban life by Joan Colom, the use of photography as memorial or critical tool by Francesc Torres and Joan Fontcuberta¿s creative and theoretical contributions to post-photography in the digital age, among others. The wide range of practices discussed encompass documentary photography, photojournalism and the relation between photography and contemporary art. These Catalan photographers and artists will be studied in an international context, in connection with the work of Robert Capa, Gerda Taro, Gilles Peress, Gervasio Sánchez, Susan Meiselas, Marcelo Brodsky, Sophie Ristelhueber, Alfredo Jaar, Gustavo Germano and Martin Parr. The main focus will be on how photography serves both as a repository of memory and as an instrument of political intervention. Offered in English.

Students will open the "black box" of museums to consider the past and present roles of institutional collections, culminating in a student-curated exhibition. Today, museums assert their relevance as dynamic spaces for debate and learning. Colonialism and restitution, the politics of representation, human/object relationships, and changing frameworks of authority make museum work widely significant and consistently challenging. Through thinking-in-practice, this course reflexively explores "museum cultures": representations of self and other within museums and institutional cultures of the museum world itself.n3 credits (no final project) or 5 credits (final project). May be repeat for credit